[Andrew M. Kuchling, on Thu, 23 Dec 1999] :: We went live with some revisions to our Web site last Saturday, and :: some of them will be of interest to Zopeheads. The most significant :: new feature is a new version of the Sequence Builder, which is at: :: :: http://www.mems-exchange.org/z/process/builder/ Nice! I wonder if this might be applicable for improving the new Zope user download/install experience? It would be nice if www.zope.org could use Zope (duh) to implement a form-driven customized installation documentation builder. What do I mean by that? New users come to download area and fill out a form which asks them certain basic questions ... o OS o ZServer-only or Apache + ZServer, etc. o PCGI, FCGI o ZODB only or ZODB + DA o and so forth ... resulting in a customized, printable Web page of sequenced installation steps, devoid of any distracting noise about matters which aren't pertinent to their needs. The current situation is a turnoff to new adopters, as reflected by the number of people who fail to notice subtle requirements squirreled away in the numerous install docs. E.g., for someone to get started with Zope using Apache and FCGI (soon to be a very common thing), they have to read README.txt, INSTALL.txt, WEBSERVER.txt, /ZServer/INSTALL.txt, /ZServer/README.txt, /ZODB/INSTALL.txt, plus numerous others squirreled away in different directories. Then the docs send them to the Fast Engines Web site for download, after which they need to read numerous FCGI documents and also are encouraged to go to www.apache.org to fish around for official information about mods and configs. All in all, this can take hours, is potentially confusing, and is ripe for human error, leading to the same install questions being asked over and over on the Web site. Why not adopt a granular approach, decomposing all the factoids and serve them up to the "customer" on a need to know basis in one nice presentation? === (Now if we could just get RedHat to include Zope in the core distribution, so that we do all the minor upgrades using their whizzy new Update Agent!)